Love Letters
I used to spend a lot of time trying to explain to my boyfriend why letters were so much more valuable than a phone call, a text
messages or an email. I am not sure if he ever really understood. You can hold a letter in your hand. You can’t do that with an email or a phone call. Ok, so you can print an email, but it’s difficult to treasure that stark white paper with its perfect type. A letter holds an imprint of the person who wrote it. It shows they took that five minutes to sit down with pen and paper. We’re more likely to reveal more of ourselves in a letter than we would otherwise.
During one “episode” when I was trying to explain my overwhelming preference for letters, I almost got my point across. I asked him if he still had the letters I had written him, he said yes, then I asked him how many of my emails he still had, the answer: none. Aha! There is the difference!
I still have letters that my high school sweet heart wrote to me. It’s always refreshing to read them, you get a sense of who you were and how you’ve changed. Love letters aren’t the only ones worth keeping, I keep letters from friends too. Those are always good for a smile and are in some ways greater treasures.
Letters seem to freeze a moment in time, one that you can re-experience any time you wish. The moments they freeze are usually ones that we want to relive as many times as we wish in any manner we choose. Maybe I’m just a sentimental sap. I keep other stuff too, I have ticket stubs from hockey games and movies and each item holds a memory. These are the types of things I’d take with me if my apartment building were on fire, because these are the things that matter